Five Year Plan for Vanderhoof

Vanderhoof city council recently laid out its plan for the city in terms of road and water maintenance, sewer, and park and cemetery beautification.

Many major roads will be upgraded and sealed within the next handful of years. One major construction will be on Clark Avenue.

The total projected cost for work on Clark Avenue is $1,275,000. This one road has completely deteriorated due to a number of reasons.

“Clark Avenue is a very steep road,” said Mayor Gerry Thiessen. “This past year we’ve had a fairly major construction project up there with BC Hydro working on a transformer substation. And now we’ve found that theres a number of springs along that hillside that are washing out that road”

The amount of money and effort that has to go into repairing the road has had a couple councillors asking at what point would does it become not worth it to take on a task of this magnitude.

Another major project in Vanderhoof is the construction of a new water tower within the next five to six years.

“The tower that we have currently was brought in when the Kenney dam was built back in the late 40s maybe early 50s so its pretty old,” said Thiessen. “We had it assessed last year and we were told at that time that we had a six to ten year window.”

A new water tower would cost $2.9 million so the plan for the city as Mayor Thiessen put it is “to work together with the provincial or federal government, hopefully both!” and receive funding for infrastructure within the next two or three years.